Techniques of the Selling Writer

by Dwight V. Swain

Techniques of the Selling Writer provides solid instruction for people who want to write and sell fiction, not just to talk and study about it. It gives the background, insights, and specific procedures needed by all beginning writers. Here one can learn how to group words into copy that moves, movement into scenes, and scenes into stories; how to develop characters, how to revise and polish, and finally, how to sell the product.

No one can teach talent, but the practical skills of the professional writer's craft can certainly be taught. The correct and imaginative use of these kills can shorten any beginner's apprenticeship by years.

This is the book for writers who want to turn rejection slips into cashable checks.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, Crafts, Research, Self Help, Business

344 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Dwight Vreeland Swain's first published story was "Henry Horn's Super Solvent", which appeared in Fantastic Adventures in 1941. He contributed stories in the science fiction, mystery, Western, and action adventure genres to a variety of pulp magazines.

He joined the staff in the extremely successful Professional Writing Program at the University of Oklahoma training writers of commercial fiction and film. He pioneered scripting documentaries and educational/instructional films using dramatic techniques rather than the previously common talking heads. In the 1960s, he scripted a motion picture, Stark Fear, starring Beverly Garland and Keith Toby. He later wrote non-fiction books about writing, including Techniques of the Selling Writer, Film Scriptwriting, Creating Characters, and Scripting for Video and Audiovisual Media, and was much in demand as a speaker at writers' conferences throughout the US and Mexico.

Reviews

[K.M. Weiland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly can't believe I haven't stumbled upon this book before now. I can't even remember having heard about it, but perhaps I did and dismissed it as a marketing book based on its title. Suffice it to say, I'm glad I've read it now. Although dated in some of its presentation, this book is a gold mine of practical tips. Swain's advice on scenes and sequels and motivation-reaction units have long since entered the writing canon, and his thoughts on structure, character, and the writing life in general are invaluable. My highlighter was very busy!

[Wilmar Luna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Techniques of the Selling Writer is quite possibly the most important book a budding author needs to read. Ignore the reviews that say the examples listed in the book are out of date or not well written, that misses the point entirely.

What this book does, and does well I might add. Is give you the basic foundation on what is important to include in your book and how to improve and refine your craft. It tells you the building blocks of writing an appropriate sentence or reaction and then reminds you that the most important thing to keep in your book, is emotion.

Sure, sure, characters and plot are important. But if you don't care about the characters, you don't care about the plot, and how do you care about characters? You make them likeable, and to make them likeable requires some kind of emotion. You need to create within the reader a need to care about your character. Yes, some of the examples and references are completely out of date, this was written quite a while ago, but the logic is sound.

So many plot, characterization, and sentence structure issues could have been avoided if I had read this book first. But what I find even more valuable in this tome, is the simple fact that the knowledge shared within its pages can be universally applied to any other creative endeavor. Script writing for movies, editing videos, writing essays. This is a must have book for any fiction writer, and a must read for any scribe planning on writing a story. Cannot recommend this book enough!

[Lexington · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very disappointed with this. It's a book that's full of commonsense tips stuffed with unnecessary explanation. I will agree that some of the information in the book is timeless, but it's nothing that can't be found online. What little useful information is available would be more appropriate in the form of a 100-tips blog post.

It's expensive for such an old book in e-book format ($16.17). Some of the verbiage was very strange and I had no idea what nor who many of the references in the book were pertaining to. I really don't think that reading this is going to help people sell more books unless they have no idea what they're doing nor how to begin writing a story.

Also, the chapter on how to actually sell the book is one page and it's useless in the current publishing era.

I did highlight a number of things, but many of them are things that I do already (because they are commonsense).

My advice would be to purchase a modern book on how to write books that sell.

[Brent · Rating 3 out of 5]

After coming across Jim Butcher, K.M. Weiland, and many others describing the usefulness of Swain’s scene-sequel format and motivation response units, I decided to go the source.

This book is dated. The author’s phrasing can be awkward, his examples are frequently sexist, and he refers to markets and tools that time has passed by.

But there is also a lot of good information in there.

And fairly frequently, Swain will present a concept or technique in his dated, awkward way, that somehow turns on the lights in my brain, and I will realize for the first time what the blogs and websites were trying to teach me, but I just couldn’t grasp.

Perhaps the awkwardness facilitates this. Perhaps by having to read more slowly and carefully you can glean more information.

Or maybe I just needed this literary equivalent of a baseball bat to my cranium to jog the ideas free.

I don’t know, but for whatever reason this book worked for me.

P.S. if you are looking for a more genteel and updated approach, a lot of the same material is also covered in The Fantasy Fiction Formula, which I ended up reading in parallel with this book.

[Taka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm--

Excited and sad.

Excited that this is an amazing book that FULLY and COMPELLINGLY covers the fundamentals of the craft of writing, and sad that I should've read this four years ago when I started writing.

Most of the books on writing have nuggets of advice that can be applied to your writing. Some of them make sense, some don't. You pick and choose what you like and move on and apply what you learned.

But this book!

So much of it is GOLD. Granted, they are really story fundamentals - what are you if you don't know them? - and not how to make your book great. The author even states he covers the principles of COMMERCIAL fiction, which to many of us literature snobs is tantamount to selling your soul to the devil.

But for the richness and depth of information contained in it, I would not mind Fausting it. I'm really motivated now to master these fundamentals and move on to something more - literary. If you can't tell a good story, don't bother writing for publication; people want to be entertained, not nod off.

The book gives you everything you need to write good stories - how to write scenes, how to structure the beginning, middle, and end, how to portray characters, and how to actually sit down and write.

Read it and master it.

[alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know, what am I doing reading books on writing when the most I write is business emails and these reviews? But creative writing itself as an art form, as a craft, has become such a fascinating topic to me. How authors manipulate the readers' emotions, how they keep us motivated to turn the pages into the wee hours of the night. Whether I decide to creatively write one day is another story - though the thought of leaving a little something behind when I go is a nice one - but this is how I'll be satisfying my curiosity in the meantime. Hopefully making it a point to see how the sausage is made won't affect my general reading experience too much 😂

The examples can be rather dated, but overall, I'd say a great lesson on pacing and plot through scene and sequel.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read done. 5 stars, but with an asterisk for all the weird sexist bs. There's really a lot of good stuff in here. There's even some surprising self-care type stuff near the end. I do think his way of thinking about things would work very well for some genres, but clearly not all. He kind of admits as much while also being dismissive of stuff that doesn't fit his model. Not going to try and write a coherent review. Wasn't initially planning to even log it, but will probably read it again soon. Perhaps after reading Deborah Chester's take. (She was taught by Bickman, who was taught by Swain. She taught Jim Butcher, which you may see as a positive or a negative, idk. Anyway, Butcher has a breakdown on live journal somewhere that sounds very much like a distilled Swain, so I'm wondering if Chester's books offer as much as Swains but perhaps without as many astonishingly dated attitudes.)

----

In progress... but I feel the need to jot down some thoughts I've had thus far to get them out of my head.

There seems to be a universal rule with any kind of howto type books where two extremes dominate and there is a woeful lack of intermediate level advice to bridge the gap between born-yesterday level advice and working on your third PhD level advice. In writing advice books this often materializes as prose level vs high level "structure" stuff. Though thinking about it, both are often born-yesterday level stuff, just differing in the choice of whether to begin with detail or big picture. This book deserves top ratings just for filling in the intervening gap more clearly and completely than anything else I've ever come across.

This is dense and has been slow going for me, despite most of what's here not really being new concepts, but it's clicking in a way it hasn't before with other versions. Once I do finish, I'll probably have to immediately reread it with an eye to taking the notes I haven't been taking on this read. Why is the kindle version price so obscene?

Kind of glad the ISBN of my book brings up this green covered version instead of the hideous barf yellow version I actually received. It's like the old 70's generic packaging. I'm surprised it doesn't just say "book" on the cover. The cover makes Dover look like bold innovative masters of graphical design.

This really feels like the ur-writing book that all others are cribbed from. Somebody probably sent Aristotle a copy via time machine. That said, Swain explains his ideas more clearly and convincingly than any other rehash of them I've personally read.

This dude is obsessed with rape and cheating wives. He comes off like some proto-incel.

"Scenes" are both more and less squishy than the common received definition would have you think. That definition makes it much harder than it should be to see how well real world stories bear out Swain's cycle.

"Sequel" is an absolutely terrible term for what he's getting at here.

This way of thinking about it really does seem like it should let you power through so-called "writer's block" if you actually applied it.


Some more thoughts I have thunk while reading this book which are not necessarily about the book:

Story structure theories are like horoscopes. If you truly believe and squint a bit while turning your head sideways and don't mind twisting or diluting the definitions of things beyond the point where they retain any usefulness, you can force anything to fit.

There is no more useless advice than that a story should have a beginning, middle, and end. Nothing that exists in a way perceptible to the standard human senses can fail to have those things. Use words that mean something.

Watching idiots talk about the importance of a "3-Act structure" while insisting the middle act is twice as long as the others and split in the center by some critical event, but somehow is still magically 1 act and not 2 is just... smh. The "act" is a useless concept.

[Quantum · Rating 1 out of 5]

The short answer: There are many better books, period. This is the only book that I've ever returned.

Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies is Comprehensive and detailed with a plethora of examples. Two techniques, which I haven't seen described in this useful and epiphanic way in any other book, stand out: particularity and triage revising. (See my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)

This book is more succinct and achieves better clarity:
GMC: Goal, Motivation and Conflict: The Building Blocks of Good Fiction

Jim Butcher's Live Journal advice on writing also describes the scene-sequel technique (and tags, the 2-sentence story question, ) that "techniques of the selling writer" formulates, but it explains the concepts more effectively and succinctly:

http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/

Note: You have to read the entries from the bottom of the page up.

The Elements of Style is much better for mechanics and composition.

You'll also find that whereas "techniques of the selling writer" predominantly uses sexist examples and exemplifies a privileged world view, these books provide a much more enlightened view to writing.

Edit (15 October 2017): Added Stein on Writing.

[Patrick Sherriff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sure, Techniques of the Selling Writer is showing its age. His language is at times inadvertently sexist, the brief section on the difference between heroines and heroes seems laughable now, and the advice on typewriter ribbons is quaint, but please dear reader, don't miss the wood for the trees. Accept that the book was written in 1965 and see what still applies -- so much does. His discussions of what makes a character compelling, how to construct scenes and above all, the importance of feeling, both in the creation of fiction and evoking it in the reader, are liberating. It's packed with practical advice but steers clear of cookie-cutter systems and "rules" in favour of suggestions of what works and why. There are a handful of books on the craft that writers should read, and we all have our favourites. This one has sprung to the top of my list as the best of the lot.

[Stefan Emunds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reality can be impersonal, harsh, even nasty. But if we conquer a part or aspect of reality, it turns into our friend and ally. This book is tough on the author, but if he/she takes its principles to heart, it will put his/her writing on a new level. What is professionalism? Sticking to the right principles no matter what. Dwight knows what he's talking about. For more than twenty years he taught a professional writing program at the University of Oklahoma. This book reveals the principles that can turn your copy into a bestseller. Not more and not less. Well, it offers a few splendid psychological insights. A must read for any author. The only drawback: the book was written before the Internet era.

[T.J. Frost · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a shelf full of 'how to write' books, but this is the one I keep returning to. I read it from start to finish before starting a novel and I read it again when I have finished, to see how I did.

You need to get past Swain's somewhat dated attitudes (complete with more than a little sexism). This book was written fifty years ago and it shows. Don't worry about it.

Every chapter is a gem. Swain breaks story-telling down into its constituent parts, then builds it up again, showing you how to structure and balance your work using motivation and response, scene and sequel and a dozen other easy-to-use techniques.

The book is aimed unashamedly at the 'selling writer'. But who doesn't want to be one of those? A lot of 'literary fiction' authors would also benefit from reading Swain's advice.

[Boingboing · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first picked up my pen (keyboard?) to take writing seriously, I ran across Randy Ingermanson's website on How To Write The Perfect Scene. His explanation was a distilled version of what Mr. Swain discusses in this most excellent book.

Until I'd come across this, I floundered with how to write something compelling. I felt as if I was wandering around feeling how to do things with no understanding of underlying structure. The results were frustrating, disappointing and disheartening.

Randy pointing the way to this book has been one of the few books that has almost single-handedly brought my writing up levels above what it was prior. It taught me how to write well-considered and executed scenes as well as started me on the path on how to read critically as well.

My writing world opened up because of this book.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE very best how-to on the craft of writing fiction! The book was written in the 60's, as evidenced by some arcane phrases. But Swain is (was) a master at teaching the craft. He taught at the University of Oklahoma and the book is published by the University's press. I got my copy through Amazon for Three Bucks + shipping ($7 total) and I would gladly pay 10 TIMES THAT AMOUNT for the information presented!

Swain easily unpacks the process of building the novel and makes it understandable in layman's terms. It was a pleasure to read and I devoured it! Now I'm going back through and re-reading it for more gems I may have missed!

If you're an author, buy this book! If you want to be an author, buy this book! If you've thought: I'd love to writer the Great American Novel, but I could never do that, buy this book! And you might surprise yourself!

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contains glimmers of insight into writing compelling fiction. I especially liked Chapter Two's section on vivid writing, and will likely refer back to it for inspiration.

Thankfully much of the great advice in this book is available from other books and websites, because Techniques of the Selling Writer is full of racism and misogyny. This may have been the norm in 1965, but in 2015, we should not need to slog through such disgusting, demeaning statements for the useful information they obscure.

Examples of the offensive comments you'll have to put up with if you read this book:

"There's a story about a Chinese who sought to divorce his wife for infidelity when she gave birth to a child with obviously Caucasian features. The judge granted the decree...on the grounds that two Wongs don't make a white."

"A heroine's prime characteristic is desirability. Her main function in a story is to serve as part of the hero's reward for being indomitable."

The sexism in particular appears in almost every story example Swain provides. Females are consistently portrayed as objects without agency that exist solely to be won or rescued.

There are many, many books on writing out there that don't require putting up with this obsolete crap, so why should I?

[Katherine Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books on the actual craft of writing that I've read. This is an excellent resource for the aspiring writer. I highly recommend this book.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

IT CAME FROM THE SLUSH PILE!!!

Back in the pre-computer dark ages I was sentenced to cull the slush pile of a best forgotten magazine, Cthulu has nothing on that horror. Please read this book if you are writing popular fiction and stop the nightmares of innocent readers. Swain provides meticulous instructions on how to write basic pulp, even if you're a James Joyce wannabee, you should learn the basic forms before mutilating them. Literati will turn their nose up at this, the descriptions are over 50 years old and a bit sexist in spots. The basics though are timeless and of the various writing books I've been exposed to, for fiction, this seems to be the best basic instruction book.

I don't write fiction but I may buy it anyway, I would give it another star then.

[Vicki Tyley · Rating 5 out of 5]

An oldie but a goodie. After more than eight years of reading writing books and blogs, I’ve come across most – if not all – the techniques covered in this 1965 book. Mind you, it never hurts to be reminded. Techniques of the $elling Writer is actually one of those books that I wish I’d read when I was first starting out. A worthy addition to any writer’s bookshelf.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a fairly common idea about art in all media that learning technique risks moving toward a derivative product. But writing seems to get the worst of this, since it doesn't require any appearance specific technical skills in the way that painting or playing a violin might. I think it's a stupid idea in general, one that underestimates the extent to which all art is a product of cultural Evolution and imitation of precursors, and one that places an unjustified weight on the notion of an inherent, authentic artistic self which can be polluted by outside influence. that idea makes even less sense when the art you're trying to produce, as in my case, it's not something groundbreaking and unique, but simply a competent combination of things I like in other books and elements of my own worldview and aesthetic. This is the sort of writer that Swain’s book is addressed to--the word commercial in the title doesn't refer to some pejorative notion of commercial writing as highly marketable takes on trending sub-genres. It just means storytelling in a way that readers will find accessible and enjoyable. And despite having read quite a lot of that sort of fiction in my life, sitting down to reproduce it myself reveals a surprisingly thin understanding of how it's actually done.

For the most part I found Techniques a refreshingly straightforward and to the point explanation of the most basic elements of fiction. It doesn't waste time with a lot of the annoying devices that such artistic how to books often indulge. Nor does it seem particularly limited to Swain’s experience, his markets, or his tastes. I found most of his explanations to give a credible and fairly universal logic justifying his suggestions. He's more focused on storytelling than prose, which is exactly what I need. The advice is condensed to the point that you can really blink and miss something useful. They're often basically bulleted lists with a few paragraphs of explanation and example. I like that but it made me want to take the book slowly lest it all go in our ear and out the other so to speak. And frankly I'm still not sure that my retention rate was all that high.

On the other hand, once you get out of the more basic stuff (ie the fundamental construction of scenes and sequences) Swain’s advice is good but starts to get a bit thin or scattershot and is probably less useful then a lot of more contemporary books that focus on specific areas, eg character or plot. The last couple of chapters give a lot of very general advice about markets, motivation, etc, that I didn't find particularly useful.This is one aspect in which the book really shows its age. The other is in the examples and sensibilities Swain uses to illustrate his points. Some of it is frankly extremely problematic, though in general it's more the kind of oblivious casual sexism you might expect from a white male genre fiction writer in the 1970s. I imagine there are comparable books written more recently that cover the same basic skills, but I found it a worthwhile, if dense, read.

[Elisabeth]

I haven't finished this yet, having had to take it back to the library before I could get through it. But I found a lot of nice practical tips in the part I did read, and will probably finish it at some point. I did find it a bit slow reading—perhaps that's because of the sheer density of useful information packed into Swain's concise sentences; or it may be because my mood/current circumstances weren't right for absorbing it quickly.

One thing to note briefly: in contrast to the last (excellent) book on writing that I read, The Anatomy of Story by John Truby, which makes a case for theme and moral argument being the backbone of a good story, Swain puts a lot of emphasis on a writer's ability to manipulate readers' emotions. It's definitely helpful to understand how a reader reacts and know how to deliver the feeling of satisfaction they get from a good book; but I think this angle is best as a companion/addition to the somewhat deeper stuff dealt with in Truby's book.

[Steven Ramirez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published over forty years ago, this is still an excellent reference. Writers who are learning the craft as well as those who want to sharpen their skills should read this book. It’s filled with practical examples of what makes solid fiction that sells. Let’s face it, most likely we are not writing the great American novel. But if you want to make a living as a writer, this book just might help get you there.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, but the author's style often got to me as I was reading it. I think it has a lot of value to the writer, especially the beginner, but even seasoned pros could glean something from this book.

[Jaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to come

[Sam Holstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only got a few pages in before giving up. This isn’t to say it’s a bad book, but it isn’t for me.

For many years, I wrote in private. I’m only just now joining the world of writers, and I’m learning that writers have a certain style they use to talk to each other. And frankly, it kills me. They use too many ellipses, wind back and forth, and appeal too much to the sense of the artist.

This book has that disease. I’m sure it has many great things about writing in it, but reading it felt like listening to an MFA. And while people who read a book about writing might be MFAs, the readers of those people are probably not.

I am just not into the “classical writers” thing. I don’t give a flying crap about the classical writers or literary fiction as a genre or other academic nonsense. So if you do, then this book is probably a lot more for you.

[Chris Babu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book on writing I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them. As the title denotes, it's targeted at aspiring writers who wish to publish their books. Swain is credited for solving "scenes" in that he decoupled how/why they work with his groundbreaking technique called MRU's (motivation reaction units). You can learn about MRU's in a zillion places now, but that only scratches the surface of everything this book has to offer. Some of the information (and even style/language) is dated since this was written in the 1960's, but it's still very usable. A big focus is on writing copy that flows, keeping the reader turning the pages. So many books focus on novel structure, and storytelling, but few do a better job (or even focus at all) on composing the actual words and sentences. If you plan on writing novels, you must read this book.

[Carrie Daws · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not what I was expecting, which was more information and techniques on selling rather than foundational information on writing. The book is older (original copyright 1965), I didn't recognize most of the examples used within, and the writing style is more lecture than conversational, but none of that means I didn't find any value in it. It does include some timeless techniques and mindsets that are worth knowing. Just don't expect to breeze through this one.

[Suzannah Rowntree · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was EXCELLENT, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to write popular fiction.

[Sarah Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is AMAZING. Super practical but also full of inspiring and passionate words on the art of writing. I’ll definitely be reading again.

[Demetri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dwight V. Swain’s “Techniques of the Selling Writer” is, at first glance, a plain thing: a mid-century paperback on how to write popular fiction, dressed in the sober, utilitarian prose of a working man rather than the oracular murmur of a professor. It promises no magic, only “techniques.” Yet half a century after its first publication, it continues to haunt reading lists and writers’ forums, recommended with a kind of stubborn loyalty. There is a reason. Beneath its dated language and occasionally wince-inducing assumptions lies a ruthless, coherent theory of how fiction works on the reader’s nerves, and a set of tools that, once internalized, are hard to unsee.

Swain’s fundamental insistence is that fiction is not a delicate cloud of inspiration but a sequence of practical moves. A story, for him, is not a theme or a mood; it is “how somebody deals with danger” – a character in jeopardy, struggling toward a concrete goal as obstacles close in. That premise, simple as it sounds, gives the book both its architecture and its ethic. Every chapter circles back to the same questions: Who wants what? What threatens them? How does this page, this line, increase the reader’s tension about what will happen next?

The book is built around a handful of core ideas that have seeped into the bloodstream of craft talk: the motivation–reaction unit, the alternation of scene and sequel, the notion that plot is essentially the planned manipulation of tension. Swain breaks the act of writing down into a chain of stimulus and response. Something happens on the page; the character perceives it; the character reacts – first emotionally, then physically, then in speech. That pattern repeats, sentence by sentence, across a scene. The goal, he keeps reminding us, is not pretty prose in the abstract but the recreation of lived experience in the reader’s imagination. The reader should not be told about events; they should feel them unfold.

This emphasis on moment-to-moment cause and effect finds its most famous expression in his scene–sequel framework. A scene, for Swain, is a unit of conflict: a character with a specific goal, facing direct opposition, and ending not in vague suspension but in a sharp setback or complication. A sequel is the emotional and strategic aftermath: the character feeling the blow, weighing options, choosing a new course. String those units together – goal, conflict, disaster; reaction, dilemma, decision – and you have, in his view, the spine of a novel. Stripped of jargon, this is simple dramaturgy. But Swain’s virtue is that he will not let it remain abstract. He wants you to be able to diagnose a stalled draft by asking, “Where is the goal in this scene? What exactly opposes it? What new problem arises at the end?”

There is a certain midwestern literalism to the way he writes about these matters. He is fond of examples drawn from boxing rings, small-town romances, Western showdowns, the sort of commercial forms that filled the pulps in his heyday. Highbrow readers may smile at the melodrama, but his choices are deliberate. He is writing for someone who wants to sell gripping stories to ordinary readers, and he refuses to flatter the notion that this is somehow beneath the dignity of art. Indeed, one of the book’s ongoing arguments is that “selling” is not a dirty word. The act of holding a stranger’s attention – their scarce, distracted, paying attention – is itself a kind of moral contract. If you break it, by vagueness or self-indulgence, you have failed at your job.

It is in the middle chapters that the book’s particular flavor emerges. Swain is surprisingly interested in psychology, though not of the clinical or fashionable sort. He treats character as a pattern of lack and compensation: people feel inadequate in some way, then adopt behaviors to ease that discomfort, then pursue goals that promise to make them “enough.” This is not deep analysis, but it is shrewd. It leads him to a practical principle: a character’s objective in the story should symbolically resolve some inner shortfall. The ambitious lawyer does not merely want a partnership; he wants proof he is not a failure like his father. The lonely woman does not merely want romance; she wants to believe she is worth being chosen. When those underlying tensions are shaped into concrete objectives and visible conflicts, the story feels larger than its plot mechanics.

He is equally clear-eyed about readers. To Swain, the habitual novel reader is, bluntly, a tension addict. Ordinary life is constrained: one cannot simply quit one’s job, seduce the neighbor, draw a gun on a rival, flee to another planet. Fiction offers the taste of those forbidden or risky experiences in a safe package. The writer’s task is to deliver controlled doses of apprehension and release. Plot, on this view, is not an outline of events but a plan for creating, intensifying, focusing, and finally discharging tension. If that sounds cold, he is quick to insist that the writer must feel deeply, must be sincerely engaged with the emotional meaning of the events. The coldness lies in the planning, not in the feeling itself.

All of this is presented in a style that owes more to a lecture hall than a salon. Swain likes lists, labels, step-by-step procedures. He divides, sub-divides, and names every moving part. At times, this can feel like watching someone disassemble a watch on your kitchen table. There are stretches when the sheer number of terms threatens to overwhelm: scene and sequel, incident and happening, stimulus and response, topic and transition. Readers who prefer their craft wisdom in aphoristic flashes may find the pages heavy going. Those who enjoy systems, checklists, and diagnostic tools will probably feel something closer to relief. The virtue of this relentless categorizing is that it offers ways out of common problems: if your story sags, you know where to look.

Still, to read the book now is to feel the drag of its era. Women appear often as examples and almost always in a limited range of roles: the girlfriend whose virtue is threatened, the wife whose loyalty is tested, the seductress who causes scenes. Ethnic and class stereotypes slide in and out of the prose with a casualness that can be jarring to a contemporary ear. At points, the language about “girls” and “housewives” is not merely dated but genuinely diminishing. None of this is unique to Swain among mid-century American writers, but the cumulative effect is real. It is possible – indeed easy – to learn a great deal from the book while simultaneously bristling at who is taken for granted as the default reader and who is being written about.

The prose itself is also very much of its time. It is clear, but it is not elegant; it is earnest, but it can be didactic. The metaphors are sturdy rather than surprising. He has a habit of circling the same point from multiple angles, as if worried his students have not yet grasped it. Some will find this repetition comforting. Others will wish an editor had cut twenty pages and trusted the reader to keep up. Yet there are flashes of dry wit, moments when he lets slip a line about the writer’s ego, or the masochism of the profession, that reveal an amused, slightly world-weary intelligence behind the blackboard.

One of the pleasures of reading the book now is noting how much of its DNA has migrated into later advice. The idea that every scene should end with the protagonist in worse trouble than before; the admonition to avoid backstory in the midst of crucial action; the focus on what the reader is worried about right now rather than on abstract structure – these have been repackaged many times, often without explicit credit. Returning to Swain can feel like going back to the source of a river whose later bends you already know. You see, in rougher, less polished form, the principles that undergird a great deal of modern writing pedagogy.

The final chapters, concerned with the writer’s life, are both bracing and oddly moving. He is not romantic about the work. Writing, he says, is the triumph of ego over fear of failure: the willingness to gamble your self-image on the possibility that what you have to say might matter to someone else. He is sharp about inertia, about the gulf between wanting to write and actually putting pages in the mail. Yet he also allows himself, in the end, a kind of quiet hope. A story is, in his formulation, a way for the writer to live in a larger world than the one offered by circumstance, and to invite readers into that larger world. It is not a ladder out of ordinary life, but an enlargement of it.

The question, for a contemporary reader who has already been steeped in a decade or two of craft books and online advice, is whether “Techniques of the Selling Writer” still deserves shelf space. The answer, I think, is yes, if you know what you are coming for and what you are willing to overlook. If you want a modern, inclusive, elegantly written meditation on the art of fiction, this is not that book. If you want a series of blunt tools for tightening cause and effect, intensifying conflict, clarifying character goals, and thinking about scenes as functional units, it remains startlingly effective. Its view of readership is narrow; its sense of who gets to be on the page is constrained; but its sense of how story grips the nerves is sharp.

In an age when advice to writers often oscillates between airy encouragement and hyper-specialized technique, Swain’s old manual holds an oddly stable middle ground. It treats writing as a craft that can be learned, a business that must be acknowledged, and an emotional vocation that requires a certain stubbornness of spirit. It will not teach you everything, and some of its lessons you will rightly discard. But if you can read past its blind spots, its clarity about tension, motivation, and moment-by-moment experience will likely deepen your own. For all those reasons, I would give “Techniques of the Selling Writer” an 88 out of 100.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely have I ever had a book speak to me as a writer. And I mean, speak to me---so loudly, clearly, and simply that I wonder if Dwight V. Swain is some sage from a thousand years ago and has seen my past writing experiences and current struggles. While I know that's not the case, as the late author passed some two years before I was born, it is clear in his writing that he has taught many students and has come across every likely pitfall of a writer, only to show them what to avoid and how to shine.

Swain isn't primarily concerned with "literary" fiction that tends to emphasize language rather than content. Rather, Techniques of the Selling Writer discusses fiction at its basic, universal core for all readers: Readers read to feel. Yes, they read to escape and to explore, but what is it that they are searching for midst this escape from reality?

Feeling. Human emotion. Anything that reaffirms their existence.

Above all, they want to feel---to feel every grain of sand pinch the skin beneath a slave's foot as he trudges to meet more traders, every tear a grieving widow sheds on her husband's grave, and every thought racing through a pilot's mind as the aliens come closer within Sector Q of the Andromeda Galaxy. It is the writer's job to make the reader feel as they read and to make themselves feel these experiences as they write.

And in his book, Swain discusses how to make it so. From choosing the right words on a sentence level to crafting characters with clear emotions for richer scenes rife with conflict, Swain guides the aspiring writer on a clear journey to long-term success. This, however, is not to say that one will get better instantly after reading this book and have no need to return to it. With everything in writing, mastering a skill takes conscious effort, and because Swain focuses primarily on larger concepts of fiction such as character, conflict, emotion, and plot, they will take a bit longer master than finding a stray adverb in a sentence and getting rid of it for more power. The writer must actively practice and be aware of how these techniques function until they become "automatic and instinctive" (Swain 82).

In other words, this is a book anyone who wants to be a writer should pick up, read, and read again, like one would eat a delicious slice of cake and wonder how in the world the chef made it. The first bite, or rather "read," you should read all the way through and gather a basic understanding of how a novel is constructed, according to Swain. Admittedly, his explanations and examples can be a little dense, which brings in the second read. The second read should pay attention more to the sections, or "layers," combing through in careful detail on them for longer periods to solidify them in the mind.

For the struggling or beginning writer, or those who wish to write more vividly and see where this vividness comes from, Techniques of the Selling Writer is well worth the time to read.

[Jonathan Peto · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another great writing book, like Scene & Structure by Jack M. Bickham. It was published eons ago in 1965 by a writer who published a huge amount of commercial fiction during his life time and taught at universities. Don’t be swayed by the fact that his work hasn’t entered the canon. Most writers can learn a lot from this book, including writers of literary fiction since most literary fiction these days contains elements of genre fiction.

Some of the main ideas here, especially about structure, are contained in Scene & Structure and more recent books like Manuscript Makeover by Elizabeth Lyon, but again, I personally love to read other angles/pathways and examples. Each author emphasizes different things. And Swain may be the first. I don’t know if he originated this way of discussing fiction, but his is the earliest one to do so that I’ve come across.

I know why I’ve never written a review of this book. It is my Bible!

Chapter 3, “Plain Facts about Feelings” (brief summary: A story is a succession of motivations and reactions) is probably worth the price of the book. But Chapter 1, “Fiction and You” is also a gem. Its brief summary is A story is experience translated into literary process.

Chapter 9, “Selling Your Stories” is outdated, but as I wrote above, that is not a reason not to buy this book. Chapter 4, “Conflict and How to Build It” (A story is a chain of scenes and sequels), is the material that other writers often seem to steal or repackage, but Chapter 5, “Fiction Strategy” (A story is a double-barreled attack upon your readers), is less traveled, or travelled less well, as are other ideas in the book. Chapter 5 is about why readers read and “the source of story satisfaction". Interesting, indeed, even if you don’t completely agree with Swain.

There is also a chapter about larger structure considerations, Chapter 6, “Beginning, Middle, End” (A story is movement through the eternal now, from past to future).

Chapter 7, “The People in Your Story”, is about characters and like the other chapters in the book, Dwight V. Swain just breaks it down in ways that will have you charging back to your drafts to fix and revise. This book is very practical and thoughtful at the same time. Chapter 8 is summarized thus: (A story is the triumph of ego over fear of failure), and Chapter 9’s summary is also lofty (A story is a larger life, created and shared with others by a writer), so there is a lot for writers of various dispositions and stages to chew on.

Is it old-sounding at times? Yes, and it may be too late for me, but I firmly believe this book lays out a lot of high-level basics. If you master them and are lucky, because it does take luck too, meaning if your ideas are unique enough and meet today's or tomorrow's zeitgeist head on, maybe you’ll become one of the lucky ones. Thanks to Dwight What else did he write? Swain.